Hello!

It’s been just over two weeks since we announced Shifted. Today we’d like to showcase our public roadmap for the project, talk about potential contributors, and invite you to the Shifted Discord server!

What is Shifted?

Shifted is a virtual world and social community where you can explore the game world, complete various quests, participate in events, and trade with other players and NPCs. These are just a few of the activities we hope to eventually include.

We’re also working on an avatar creator where players can create and adapt their custom character to their liking. You’ll be able to customize all of your character’s features, from your nose, ears, and eyes to your body, arms, and legs. You can also dress yourself in a variety of outfits, and we’ll be adding plenty more as the game grows and develops.

You can connect with other players through an integrated forum we’ve been building from the ground up. You can set your avatar’s expression on each post and, if you have multiple avatars saved, decide which to use while posting (to make roleplaying with multiple characters easy). You can also gain game currency from your posts, and we have other features planned.

Public Roadmap? What’s that?

The roadmap is where you can see our current development status and track the features of Shifted which are actively being worked on by our team!

The cards in our roadmap are colour-coded with a legend so you can see which features our team is implementing and tweaking. Some of these cards have extensive checklists, and we’re always open for feedback on anything we’re working on.

This board will only contain features which we’re publicly discussing. There are other features being developed which we’re keeping a bit quiet while we work out the details.

You can find our public roadmap here: https://kanban.shifted.me/b/x9SneTaZeHWYEL8Pn/public-roadmap

We’re also opening the Shifted Discord up to the public! You can join us here: https://discord.gg/u9ZyWG7

We’re eager to chat with anyone interested in Shifted who’d like to provide feedback or suggestions and keep a close eye on our development. You don’t need to be a developer to join!

How can I support the project?

We’re incredibly appreciative when anyone spreads the word about Shifted. One easy way to support us is by sharing our announcement posts. We’re also looking for people who’d like to help build the game itself. If you’re interested in contributing, be sure to check out the next section!

Financially, we haven’t set anything in place just yet. Our current plan is to set up a Patreon or run a crowdfunding campaign, but we’re still in early stages and this isn’t set in stone.

Ideally, we’re looking to offer a premium user option where players will get some small benefits as a token of our appreciation without gaining any unfair advantages over ordinary players. Some of our potential ideas on this so far are:

• A private forum section for premium users to interact with each other. We’ll also be giving sneak peeks of upcoming content there, so premium users will be able to check out and give feedback on some future content before it’s revealed to the whole playerbase.
• A profile badge indicating a player’s premium status and support for Shifted.
• A special forum post flair. When posting on our forums, you can select backgrounds for your posts, and premium users will have access to a premium flair.

How do I become a contributor?

We’re looking for the following:

• Front-end developers. We’re not that great at UI and making things look pretty. If you’ve got some knowledge on modern HTML/CSS/Javascript, please let us know! We could especially use some help with this.
• Back-end developers. We can always use more! Currently, we’re using Python, Flask, and SQLAlchemy, but requirements may change in the future.
• Artists. We’re looking at creating our avatar components and items with vector images (SVG format), so if you’re proficient with this or would like to give it a shot, let us know!
• Writers. We’re developing Shifted’s backstory and working on its worldbuilding. If you’re interested in helping us build the game lore and develop characters and quests, we’d love to hear from you!

Please note: Shifted is a volunteer-driven project and we can’t offer any payment for your contributions at this time. Ideally, we’d love to gain enough support to be able to pay our contributors someday, but for now we’re just looking for people interested in helping us develop an awesome web project. If just you’re looking to brush up on your skills or tinker with Shifted in your spare time, we’d be happy to have you on board to help us grow.

If you’re interested in contributing, please join us on our Discord server and let us know! Here’s the link: https://discord.gg/u9ZyWG7

Thanks for reading. We look forward to sharing more about Shifted in the future!